So, you spent hours painting and decorating the walls in your home, but now you are wondering what it will take to keep them looking great. You have to deal with oily fingerprints, pets that rub up against the walls, scuff marks near the floor and dust and debris that finds it way all over the walls. Pretty soon, you will be left with a painted wall that doesn’t look nearly as nice as it used to.

However, there are some maintenance tips we can give you that will make a huge difference in how your walls look. You can have beautiful walls all year long and not have to do major repaints a few months after painting them. If you follow these guidelines and use these tips, you can keep your walls looking their best for years to come.

You want to start by regularly vacuuming the walls with the soft brush attachment on your vacuum cleaner. This will deal with the dust and most of the dirt and other particles on your walls. Just vacuum gently, without pushing the vacuum hard against the wall, and you will get rid of most visible debris.

The marks and oils are a bit tougher to deal with, but you do want to address them as soon as you notice them. You can use bleaching cloths and other mild cleaning agents to get rid of them. Make sure that whatever you use is designed to be safe for paint and that it won’t take the paint off with the marks. For the tougher stains and marks, you can use baking soda and water, mixed into a paste, and rub it onto the wall with a nonabrasive cleaning tool, such as a soft rag or cloth. This works really well for latex-based paints, which make up the majority of paint that people use on their walls.

For oil-based paint, you can clean using a white vinegar and water mixture. Just rub the affected areas with this solution using a soft cloth.

For enamel and other flat paints, you want to deal with stains quickly. The longer you wait to clean them up, the worse they will be to get rid of. You can use something like a Magic Eraser to get off those tough stains. Milder stains can be cleaned away using a rag dipped in warm water. Just be careful not to rub and clean so hard that you chip away at the paint. That’s the biggest danger with using anything to clean your walls. You want to protect the paint job as you clean the wall, and striking that balance can be difficult. The trick is to start out gentle and go tougher and tougher until the dirt or stain comes off.

With these tips, you should be able to keep your walls clean and looking great for a long time to come. Just be sure to address stains and marks on your walls as soon as you can so that your work is as simple as possible.

Most homeowners will wait until the paint on their house looks terrible before they try to repaint, but how often is too often to repaint the exterior of your house? How often should you be repainting it? The answer isn’t as simple as giving out a number to go by. It actually depends on a number of factors.

The biggest factor is going to be where you live. The environment around your house can have a huge effect on how often the paint needs to be touched up or completely redone. If you live by the sea, for instance then that corrosive salt from the water and wind can eat away at the paint and the materials underneath pretty quickly. You will probably have to repaint your house close to once a year. There are special paints you can buy that are more expensive than the regular paint that will protect your house for longer, though.

If you live in very rainy or windy areas, then that can cause weathering on the paint that requires regular repainting as well. The worse the weather conditions are, then the more often you need to repaint.

The material that your house is made of can determine how often you need to repaint as well. In temperate conditions, a wooden house needs to be repainted every five to seven years. Painted brick needs to be repainted once every 15-20 years. If the brick is not painted, then you don’t need to paint it over. You can just clean it.

If you have a house with aluminium siding, then you should expect to be repainting it every five years or so. Stucco houses will need a paint job every five or six years. If you have a cement house, then you only need to repaint once every 10-15 years. All of these estimates are based on environments where the weather is fairly mild.

The quality of the paint can determine how often to repaint as well. If you use low quality paint, then you may need to repaint every other year or so. High quality paint can last for five years or longer without needing to be painted over. If you use low quality paint, then it can blister, crack, peel or fade fast, and you can have a poor looking house after about a year of mild weather hitting that paint.

You should look for signs that your paint needs to be touched up or redone. Look for peeling, cracked, blistered or bubbling paint. If you do see bubbles in the paint, then that could mean you have a water leak in your home, but the other signs are usually indicators that it is about time to replace your paint. Faded paint should be redone as well, since it is thinning out and won’t provide adequate protection for your home. If you aren’t sure if your paint needs to be redone, then consult a painting expert before you commit to repainting your home.

You can use different painting techniques and design tricks when painting small rooms than you would when painting a larger room. There are some things you can do to make the room look better or to create a better sense of space in the room. Here are our best tips for painting small rooms.

Have a Focal Wall
If you create a point of focus, the room can seem bigger. What this means is that you paint one wall a different colour than the rest. It could be all black, while the rest of the room is a lighter, brighter colour. That makes the black wall the focal point. Really, whatever one wall is coloured won’t matter. If all the rest are their own uniform colour, then the single different wall becomes the focal point, but black is the preferred focal wall colour.

Go with Lighter Colours
When you can, use lighter colours in your small room. This gives the illusion that there is more space, and if you are getting natural sunlight in from outside, then the light colours will reflect that and light up the room, making it look even more spacious. Reflected light makes it harder to focus on any one area and makes walls appear farther apart. You may not have much space to work with, but it doesn’t have to look that way.

Don’t Forget the Ceiling
We recommend painting the ceiling a light grey or off-white colour. This makes it difficult to focus too hard on any one point and makes your ceiling seem higher than it actually is. Painting the ceiling also adds some light to the room, especially if you go with a lighter colour, and it allows for a greater sense of space and freedom. Some people don’t bother painting the ceiling, but we highly recommend it. Besides, if you have a small room, painting the ceiling won’t take very long.

Makes Some Space
If you are going through the trouble of painting a small room, you should also take the time to redesign the setup of the room. Get rid of some of the clutter and choose furniture that gives you more space to move around in. You also want to go with furniture that ties in with the paint colours you have used, to create a uniform look.

All these tricks are mostly designed to give you a better sense of space in the room and make it feel like there is more space than there actually is. If you combine them all, you can create a room that feels bigger than it is and that is a lot more comfortable than it has any right being. You don’t have to feel cramped in your small room. You can have a great sense of roominess and freedom, even in the confines of a little room. You just have to employ some time-tested techniques to open up the space a bit.

In order to get a great looking interior door, you need to follow a specific process.

The steps we lay out for you will allow you to have beautifully painted doors very time.

1. Remove the door from its hinges
You want to start by getting the door free from its hinges. If you paint the door while it is still attached, you can end up getting paint where you don’t want it. It is much easier to paint all sides of the door when it is standing free.

2. Prep the door
Next, you want to clean the door of any debris, dirt and loose paint. Scrape peeled paint off and fill any holes with caulking or some other filler. You may also need to sand the door down to get it perfectly smooth. Once the door is completely smooth, you will be ready to paint.

3. Prime the door
The paint may not stick very well if the door is not properly primed. You can prime it using a grey-tinted primer. This will allow you to easily change the colour to whatever you want. You can use a primer that is the colour you want to paint in, if it is available, but that’s not necessary. The paint should completely cover the primer.

4. Re-prep the door
Once you have applied the primer, then you need to sand the door once more to get rid of any new paint bubbles that might have formed.

That’s fairly common when you are using a primer, so just know that you may need to do some extra sanding to smooth out the door.

5. Paint your door
Now you are ready to paint the door, and you can use a foam roller with ease since the door is off its hinges. Be sure to paint from top to bottom in long, smooth strokes. This will eliminate any brush lines and reduce overlapping layers. You can paint the entire door before letting any one side dry, if you like, or you can paint it in parts. Just be sure to paint an entire side before you stop. That way, you get a nice, smooth finish.

6. Let the door dry
The door needs some time to dry after you paint it. If the room is well ventilated, then you should only need to let it dry for about two hours, but your results may vary based on where you live and the conditions of the environment you are painting in.

7. Hang the door
Finally, you can hang the door back on its hinges. Just be sure that all the paint is dry. Following these steps will eliminate a lot of mess for you and ensure that you don’t have much clean-up to deal with. If you followed this guide, then you should have a beautiful door that you can be proud of with a paint job that will last for a long time.

Every homeowner that does any painting for themselves will make a few mistakes every now and then. It’s not the end of the world when problems arise as you are painting. You don’t have to call a professional just because you messed up. There are some easy fixes for most of the common errors that amateur painters make.

We are going to look at a few of those fixes for you.

Handle Paint Drips
If your painting is leaving behind drips of paint on the wall, then you need to lay off the paint. Use less paint on your brush. You should only have enough on there to cover the brush and not so much that it is dripping. If you have some paint drips on the wall, you can simply repaint the area. That should even it out for you.

If the paint has dried and the drips have solidified, then you may need to chip them off with a paint scraper and then repaint that area.

Get Rid of Stains
A stain on the wall can be troublesome to fix, but you can handle that as well. You can use a white powder known as TSP (trisodium phosphate) to clean the affected area. Let that dry, and then apply an oil-based undercoat. That needs to dry too, and once it does, then you can repaint the area.

Dealing with Brush Marks
If you painted an area of your home and then noticed brush marks on the dried paint, you might be wondering how to get rid of them. Don’t panic. Just sand down the area until it is nice and smooth and repaint it. It’s as simple as that, and the more severe and obvious brush strokes just need some extra sanding. Just be sure to only sand enough to remove the paint and not so much that you damage the walls.

Get Rid of Paint Bubbles
This is probably the most complicated paint fix you well have to tackle, but with a little know-how, you may be able to handle it. This problem is usually caused by too much moisture under the paint or in the walls. When that occurs, you may have a leak to deal with. In that case, you might need to call plumber to fix it. If it is not a leak causing the moisture, then you are probably not letting the wall dry from the most recent rain, or you just need to install some insulation in the wall.

Either way, you will need to sand over the paint bubbles or chip away at them with a paint scraper. Once they are off, you can repaint the area. Just be sure to wait until the wall is dry to do so.

Those common mistakes can all be fixed without the intervention of a professional, in most cases. Try these solutions to see if they will work for you, and you can save time and money and still get a great looking home.

Do you want your house to look sophisticated and modern? Then you’ll have to keep up with the latest design trends and change your home accordingly. Some trends are easier to keep up with than others, and painting trends often require the least amount of change to your home to achieve.

Last year, the trend was toward subtle, homely colours. Greys, light browns and other neutral colours reigned, but that’s all starting to change. Painting trends tend to go through cycles, and after the dry, kind of boring period, you usually get vibrant and rich colours.

That is what we are seeing for 2018 so far. People are going bolder with their colours, and they are choosing rich hues that burst with flavour and character.

The appeal of trying something new is what is bringing this bold colour palette swap to the forefront of modern interior design.

The reason behind keeping up with a paint trend is a personal one. You may just want your home to be modern and chic looking. Or you may want to try something new and might desire to see how modern trends work for you. Or you could be looking to sell your home, and you are doing everything in your power to make the home inviting to the common consumer.

Whatever the case may be, it’s not hard to stay up with the current trend. If you go bold with your colour choices and pick dark red, deep yellow, powerful blue or luscious green, then you will be right on trend. Just make sure that the paint colour you choose matches your furniture and the design aesthetic of your home.

You don’t want to change your home’s colour just because of a trend and not because you think it will look good.

You may want to do some colour comparison and take samples from the paint store into your home to compare them in the lighting they will enjoy once you apply them. That’s the best way to tell how well they will work with the rest to your decor and with the atmosphere of the house.

You don’t have to just go with bright colours to be on trend, though. A lot of people are using black as a statement colour, accenting the rest of their home with its sombre tone. This colour and other dark colours can make the lighter furniture and fixtures really pop, and you need to consider how those things will look with the new colour in place.

A great way to get some idea as to what might look good in your home is to browse modern homes online and find something that is similar to the design aesthetic you have imagined in your head. You don’t have to choose a colour palette that perfectly matches modern trends, but changing things up to go with what is trending can give your house an entirely new, very contemporary feel to it that you might otherwise miss out on.